Ilyra halts suddenly before a pair of tall carved doors.
“He is in here,” she says softly, stepping aside.
My jaw tightens. “Open it,” and my voice is harsher than I mean it to be. She flinches, just slightly.
“Of course, Your Highness.”
She reaches for the handle, but her fingers hesitate, brushing it as if it might bite.
I square my shoulders. “Now, Ilyra.”
Her throat bobs with a swallow, and she pulls the door open. It creaks with protest, groaning under its own age. Beyond the threshold, there is nothing. No firelight, no hearth-glow, only blackness that swallows the room whole.
A flash of lightning forks the sky outside, and for a heartbeat the room blazes white, revealing the silhouette of a figure seated in a high-backed chair, unmoving, face cloaked in shadow.
“Kaelus,” Ilyra says. “Your son has returned and wishes to speak to you.”
I step forward, cautious, lingering at the edge of the darkness.
“Father?” I call out.
No response. No movement.
Zyphoro scoffs behind me. “Enough of this,” she says, stepping into the room.
“No!” I snatch at her arm, but she’s faster than my grasp.
In a blink of steel and shadow, they descend, Fae cloaked in the dark, knives glinting, eyes hollow with fury. They crash into her, dragging her down. I surge forward, magic pulsing to life in my blood.
But then, impact.
A shield slams into me, flinging me back with a force that rattles through my skull. I stumble, brace myself against the doorframe, blinking hard, and then I feel it, the shimmer, the hum of something far older than mere wards.
Mor’Thravar magic.
A barrier, thin as gossamer but pressing down with the force of a mountain. My fingers twitch, smoke curling up from my palms, my power coiling at the edges of my control, begging to be unleashed. Ready to burn. Ready to destroy.
But I can’t. Not here. Not now. Not when I’m this close. Not when summoning it could call something darker.
Something I might not be able to send back.
Instead, my companions fight in my stead.
Reon lunges toward Zyphoro, arm outstretched, golden sparks of his gift already beginning to shimmer across his fingers. But before time can bend to his will, a barrier flares around his hands, snuffing out the magic like a candle under glass. The light dies with a hiss. He grits his teeth, wrestling against it, but it’s too late. A boot slams into the back of his knees and he collapses with a grunt, taken down hard.
Orios is next. He hurls himself into the shadows, fury made flesh. His sheer strength alone sends two, three of them flying, bodies hitting stone, crashing into tables, thrown like dolls. For a heartbeat, hope flares. For a heartbeat, I believe he might actually do it, tear through every coward in the dark, every fool who dares lay hands on us.
But even the fiercest champions have weaknesses.
“Enough!” Ilyra’s voice cuts through the chaos like a whip crack.
Orios stills, his chest heaving. He turns toward her, and I see the way his rage falters. The way it dies.
Because she’s holding a blade to Solena’s throat.
A slow burn begins in my chest as the shield coils tighter around me, crushing me to my knees. It scalds my skin, dragging fire across my ribs, over my spine.
“You fucking traitor,” I grit out, voice ragged with pain. “Ilyra.”
